Never Safe - Redux
by FuryInternalis
Summary: Rewrite. AU. After breaking Sarah out of jail and creating a tense alliance with Weaver, the Connors head to the eastern United States to take on Kaliba, but a new enemy arises, and dealing with one that's stronger than they've seen before will test and tear relationships; but also create new ones with new faces in the ongoing war against Skynet. Jameron.


**A Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Fanfiction**  
><strong>Never Safe - Redux<strong>

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><p><strong>Author's Prelude:<strong>  
>Hello everyone. Right off the bat, let me start by saying that I'm sorry for leaving all of you in the dark with the original version; quitting work after Chapter 3. To keep this short and sweet, I was not pleased with how it was turning out. Not at all. I was leaving too many plot holes and was making it harder for Cameron to make a successful and properly placed return. This time, I'm going to keep this simpler but with some major edits to some ideas I've had, along with more details in some spots in which I felt that there was much more room for improvement. You'll see what I'm talking about soon. For the record, our OC friends will still be sticking around. Also, chapters will come out when they come out. No more scheduled release dates. I don't hold up to deadlines well, especially when I'm writing. Sorry.<p>

So without further ado, let's begin again.

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><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>  
><strong>Where It All Begins<strong>

**February 21st, 2009**

As James Ellison stood in an elevator, descending floor by floor to the lobby, his heart was pounding. He was going to meet Sarah Connor. The woman who has haunted his dreams and thoughts for the past 9 years. It didn't help that she probably wanted to kill him after he was followed to the movie theater to pick up Savannah. He could only pray she wouldn't kill him on sight. Then there was Catherine Weaver, his boss. All he knew was that she wanted to thank Sarah personally for saving her daughter. James knew better, of course. He knew there was a much deeper, more serious meaning to this meeting. And he knew what it was about. The elevator stopped. This was it.

As the elevator door opened and Ellison walked out, John Connor's attention was diverted from his mother to the sound of the elevator. For all John could care, this man was the one that put his mother behind bars, only to have her subsequently released at the hands of Cameron. If not for his self-control, John would already be strangling him. The trio stood up. John looked over to his mom. "Where's Weaver?" huffed John.

"She's upstairs, in her office. She's waiting for you." said Ellison.

Cameron, in order to keep her true identity concealed, had her face covered by a ski mask and wore an oversized hoodie. She looked over to Ellison. "John Henry. Where is he?"

Ellison was about to tell Cameron where he was, but he was interrupted by Sarah. "We need you here. If anything goes wrong up there, we're gonna need you to take care of it." Cameron would have portrayed a look of disappointment if she had one. This John Henry character was becoming more and more of a threat. The sooner she removed him, the better. "He needs to be destroyed. He's becoming more of a threat." Sarah looked at Cameron. "He can be dealt with later. We don't know this woman." She weighed the odds. John was of her highest priority, and they were defenseless, aside from her, of course. They had no weapons, only their bare hands. The group got into the elevator. The ride was uncomfortably quiet until Ellison spoke up. "Are you expecting trouble?"

"No change for the meter." Sarah quipped. More silence.

He tried to break the tension slightly once more. "You're not armed, are you?"

"Expecting trouble?" she said.

"No reason for that."

"No reason at all." Sarah said. Or so she hoped.

The elevator arrived on the 25th floor. "Follow me." Catherine Weaver's office was down the hallway directly in front of the elevator. As Ellison was just about to knock on the door, Sarah stopped him. "Wait," Sarah looked over to Cameron. "You ready for this?" Cameron nodded. Sarah looked to Ellison, and he knocked on the door. There was the sound of a click in the door's handle, and it slowly opened.

Ellison opened the door to reveal a sleek office adorned with clean and shining glass tables and metal chairs with a resemblence to a freshly made Terminator's endoskeleton. A fish tank holding an eel sat in the wall, visible through the hallway and in Weaver's office like a window. Small plant pots holding varieties of flowers, shrubs and ferns sat in the corners of the office, and a large fishbowl with two long-stemmed flowers sat on top of a table at the back of the room, giving the room a lively feeling.

"Mrs. Weaver, this is John and Sarah Connor, and.. Cameron." said Ellison.

"Thank you, James, but I know very well who they are." she said. "And Cameron, you can take off your terrible disguise. We all know what you are here." Sarah was a little taken back by Weaver's sudden knowledge that Cameron was a machine. But before she could tell Cameron anything, she already had her mask half-way off her head. "Cameron, what are you-"

"It's okay, Sarah. It was a bad cover up."

Sarah just shook her head in a mixture of disgust and embarrassment. Weaver smirked. "Now that that's over with, we can move on. Why are we here?"

"We need-" but Sarah was interrupted by Weaver.

"Let me say this: We are here first and foremost so I can thank you for your heroism regarding Savannah. She is the light of my life, and I would be lost without her."

Sarah was already growing suspicious of this strange woman. She knew what Cameron was, she was showing little to no emotion, and had a stone cold face that reminded her of the T-1000 that sent a spike through her shoulder. Either this woman was the most serious bitch ever or she was metal. "And where is she?"

"Let's assume school." said Weaver. "We have a common enemy. One that we cannot fight with conventional methods or by conventional means."

"Hmmph. Kaliba? Don't pretend you don't know Kaliba." said Sarah. "I'm sorry, I wasn't speaking to you." said Weaver. She looked at John. "I was speaking to you. About Skynet." That got Johns attention, who was more interested in getting the hell out of here, and fast.

"Savannah has told you about John Henry, I assume. Which is why I assume you brought your cyborg here, so that once we're done, you can skulk around my basement."

"Wait, what the hell?" Ellison pointed out the window at the rapidly approaching figure. All heads, metal and flesh were focused on a small object that was rapidly growing closer. Cameron zoomed in on the object. "It's the drone." Cameron stated.

"Get down." said Weaver. Everybody obliged, and in that instant as the drone collided with the building, the seemingly-normal Catherine Weaver expanded into a shield of metal, preventing the group from any sort of harm that would have come to them on Kaliba's last-ditch effort to kill all of them at once. The drone smashed all the glass in the room upon it's entrance. Shards of metal, glass and plaster flew like projectiles across the room, plunking off of Weaver's body and landing on the ground, keeping the group shielded. The flames increased and the drone skidded across the floor of the room, making a loud scratching noise. The room's temperature went from a chill 72 degrees to a hot 131 in almost an instant, and it was rising. Fast. She knew the group couldn't handle the heat that was being generated.

"Run!"

The group hurried to their feet and ran out of the room. The glass eel-tank shattered during the crash and the flopping 'eel' morphed into a sliver of the mimetic poly-alloy that made up Catherine Weaver, and sunk back into her body. Just as everybody was out of the room, an explosion shot out from the room. "Get to the stairs!" shouted Cameron. "The door is jammed! Cameron, pull it off!" shouted John. Cameron ripped off the door and the group hurried down the flights of stairs.

"The basement, Mr. Ellison. John Henry." said Weaver. "We need to get out! They're trying to kill my son!" said Sarah.

"No, they're trying to kill my son." Weaver looked at Cameron. "Just like you were going to." She turned back to Sarah. "Your John may save the world, Sarah Connor, but he can't do it without mine." The group rushed down the stairs. As the group ran down the stairs and burst through the door into the basement, Cameron and John sprinted ahead of the group. John burst into the room.

There he was. Cromartie. Or, in Weavers' words, John Henry. John was shocked. The machine that had tried to kill him for over a year was sitting there, in front of them. If John wasn't persuaded by Weaver's words, he would've found the closest, most blunt object he could find and try to beat the bastard down. As Sarah entered the room, she was equally shocked as well. As everyone charged into the room, John Henry was standing at the wall, watching through many security cameras. He turned to face Mrs. Weaver and Mr. Ellison, and their accomplices. His mind was distracted by one of the new entities in his presence: the girl with the metallic face and shining blue eye sticking out from the once flawless skin.

"Hello. I know you." said John Henry. Cameron tilted her head in her trademark way. "And I know you."

"John Henry, are you alright?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weaver. There was an explosion on the 25th floor, in your office. Power has been cut and the basement is running on backup power to keep my server farm at approximately negative five degrees centigrade." said John Henry.

"John, look. I know that. I've seen it before." Sarah pointed to the black box sitting behind the bulletproof glass case.

"Is that the Turk? That's Andy Goode's Turk!" John said.

"Three dots. You terminator bitch. You're building Skynet." said Sarah.

"No. I'm building something to fight it. And I'd watch who's calling who a bitch." said Weaver.

Meanwhile, as the group was arguing over how they thought Catherine Weaver was building the apocalypse-incurring artificial intelligence, Cameron and John Henry were looking at each other. Cameron was attempting to understand how this John Henry entity was in Cromartie's body. Her only logical explanation of this situation was because of the Turk sitting in the background. Andy Goode and James Ellison should have been killed. She knew she should have never let Ellison go. She should have killed him when she had the chance. They were threats.

Cameron was broken from her study of John Henry. "Will you join us?" he said.

Those words caught the attention of everybody in the room, and brought Cameron back to reality. "What did you say?" John asked John Henry.

"Will you join us." he repeated. Everybody stared at Cameron, expecting an explanation. Nobody but the machines in the room knew what this was. Will you join us? Will you join the Machine Rebellion?

Cameron's response was simple. She pulled the switchblade from her back pocket and released it.

"Wait, what the hell does that mean? What's going on?" Ellison was standing in the doorway, completely baffled and left clueless on the events transpiring.

"Emergency responders have entered the building above and it is only a matter of time until they make their way to the basement. There are other cyborgs with them, disguised." John Henry brought up live CCTV footage from the lobby of firemen running into the building onto the large screens around the room. Four of the men were very large and definitely stuck out. "She has the closest matching chip design for me. It will allow me to be mobile." said John Henry.

"Wait, she has a different chip design than a T-888 does. How are they similar?" John asked.

"John, in a sense, I am a T-888; but not completely. I was built with a similar design but a smaller combat chassis which is why I cannot fight other machines effectively without assistance. My infiltration subroutines are larger than that of a normal T-888, requiring a much more sophisticated chip design." She flipped the switchblade around pointed the handle at John.

"Cameron.. We don't know him. We can't trust him." said John.

"I will not delete her. I will only split my personality with her; she will be completely seperate from me."

"Don't worry, John. Giving my chip to John Henry is the most strategically sound option for this situation. He is an ally. We can trust him. If he cannot be mobile, we may not have a chance to win the fight against Skynet." said Cameron.

"What about your body? We can't just leave you here." said Sarah.

"My body weighs 70.3068 kilograms. One of you should be able to carry me while we escape." she said.

"Why do you weigh so little, though? Aren't you made out of metal?" asked Ellison.

"We wouldn't be very good infiltrators if we weighed more than we look." Cameron still held the switchblade to John. "Do it." Reluctantly, he took it, and he let it loosely hang in his hand for a moment, thinking. Was this really the best idea? Could we trust John Henry?

The sound of the large metal doors of the elevator being smashed in echoed down the hallway and into the room.

"JOHN CONNOR!" His mother's outburst brought him back to reality. John tightened his grip on the switchblade and made his way to Cameron, who was now sitting on the chair on the other side of the desk from John Henry. He trusted Cameron's judgement. He trusted _her_, no matter what. He just hoped that this was the best idea. John Henry was Cromartie. Physically, at least. Was he the same mentally? Deep down? Did John Henry want to kill him just like every other terminator?

"How long will it take you two to split?" he said, as he finished cutting into her scalp.

"Estimated time is 180 seconds." said Cameron. John finished cutting her scalp and popped the port cover open.

"We're going to have to fight our way through this, aren't we?" said Sarah. It was the inevitable. The sound of the metal doors from the elevator being beaten in stopped, and a loud slam let the room know that they have arrived. Four machines were coming towards them. They had to fight.

Catherine Weaver formed her hands into large blades. "Mr. Ellison, are you armed?"

"Yes, but wait, when did I become a part of this? I didn't sign up to fight these machines. And you-"

Sarah interrupted him before he could go any further. "You became a part of this when you were born. Give me your gun." Ellison didn't understand, but he reluctantly handed over his standard-issue Glock-17 and extra magazine.

"I'm sorry, Cameron." John whispered. "It's okay John. Do it."

He pulled out her chip, and her body slowly went limp, and her blue eye slowly faded to black. John made his way over to John Henry and began the process of inserting Cameron's chip.

"Are you sure this will work, John Henry?" asked John. "Yes. I can change the boot protocol to launch with my personality on my individual partition of the chip. Her thoughts, memories, and data will remain safe." John popped John Henry's vacant port cover and put Cameron's chip in.

"The process is beginning. I will be in a state of shutdown." said John Henry. Weaver stood in front of the desk as John moved the rolling chair holding Cameron's body behind John Henry.

The first machine burst into the room in firefighter equipment, wielding two silenced UZI's. Weaver reacted in time to send a metal spike through it's power core before it could fire a single shot. It fell limp to the ground and the second machine burst into the room. Sarah fired off shots at the machine's head aiming for the eyes, and Weaver wrapped a metal clamp around the weapon of the next machine and crushed it. She attempted to send another spike through this machine's head, but this one reacted in time and ducked it, slicing off it's left ear instead. It grabbed one of the UZI's from it's fallen partner and shot Weaver a few times before she could send a swift decapitating strike at the machine.

The next machine entered the room with a sawn-off Remington 870. It loosed shots at Weaver, blowing her chest cavity open, leaving a hole where it was. Sarah attempted to distract the machine while Weaver regenerated. She loosed more shots at it's head, and one shot managed to hit it's left eye, destroying the optic sensor, half-blinding it. The machine turned it's attention to Sarah. He fired a shot where she was, but she managed to roll out of the way in time before the shots blew a gaping hole in the wall. Weaver finished regenerating and slithered behind the machine. She grabbed it's neck and rotated it a full 360 degrees, destroying the skin at the base and completely severing the machine's connection to the rest of his body.

The final machine walked into the room with an FN-P90. He fired at the first target he saw, which was John Henry. The machine managed to loose about 12 shots before Weaver smacked the weapon out of it's hand and sent two spikes into it's chest. "That's my boy you're shooting." she said as she ripped the chestplate open.

Just as it was all clear, John Henry booted back up, and he pulled the cord from the back of his head. He stood up and analyzed the fallen machines. "These are series 888, but I'm afraid their chips may be covered in the compound which destroys it when it comes in contact with oxygen."

"We don't have any time to find out." Sarah said. John Henry hoisted Cameron's deactivated body over his shoulders.

"We need to move. Grab some of these guns." John took the P90 and Ellison took one of the UZI's.

"So how are we going to get out of here?" Ellison asked.

Weaver walked over to a keyboard on the wall that was attached to a monitor and pressed a series of buttons.. A small mechanical whirr started, and the wall to the left of John Henry's desk began to move inwards and slide over, revealing a passage out of the room.

"This tunnel goes into the sewer system. I had it set up in case of a situation like this." said Weaver. A gruesome smell wafted through the door. John, Sarah and Ellison each covered their noses in reaction.

"And just _why_ did it have to be the sewers?" John asked, disgusted at the thought of running through the sewers.

"It was the most accessible. Do you have a better idea?" Weaver retorted.

"Uck. But what about that?" Sarah pointed to the Turk.

Weaver grabbed the brain of John Henry and pulled it from it's case. The wires attached to the back were ripped out with sparks, and she tucked the Turk under her arm. "Let's move."

The group hurried themselves into the tunnel and emerged into the stinking halls of the L.A. sewers. The humans in the group all reacted the same, retching and gagging at the disgusting smells. Ellison even threw up. After a few minutes and many turns, they came to a ladder with a manhole cover. "Where does this lead out to?" asked John between coughs.

"This takes us into an alley by the 105 freeway. We can steal a car and then head to a safe house I keep running." said Weaver.

"Then let's get the hell out of here, please." said Ellison. The group made possibly record time climbing the ladder to the surface, where the fresh air was much appreciated. As everybody gained their breath, John looked around, to find Weaver gone. "Where the hell did she go?" In that moment, a dark green soccer mom van pulled into the alley. Weaver was driving. "Wait, how the hell did she- where- how?" said Ellison in disbelief.

"Don't underestimate the power of a T-1000." said Sarah. Weaver stepped out of the van and motioned for John to drive. Just as Ellison was about to step into the van, Weaver spoke up to him. "Mr. Ellison, if I may ask kindly, could you please watch over Savannah until we return? Make sure she stays safe."

He sighed with relief. "My pleasure." He walked out of the alley and hailed down a cab.

"Make haste, Mr. Connor. With the prison break, road blocks out of the city will be up soon."

"Yeah, no pressure. Thanks." he said as he rolled his eyes and pulled out of the driveway. "So where exactly are we going?" he asked.

"13371 McClaren Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada." said Weaver. "Mrs. Weaver, will we be safe there?" asked John Henry.

Both John and Sarah knew the answer to that one.

_"No one is ever safe."_

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><p><strong>Reviews are greatly appreciated. Also, I don't know if that address is even an address. If it is, please don't send pizzas and dildos.<strong>


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